The PPE (personal protective equipment) shortage for health care workers and first responders around the nation has been well-documented and it's so great to see donations to alleviate those concerns here at home.

The Linn County Emergency Management Agency and Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids have both announced wonderful donations of essential equipment. The donations came from right here and a business nearly 500 miles away.

At top is a photo of workers at Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids who received 10,000 N95 masks on Tuesday. 10,000! They came from a Home Depot in Luckey, Ohio, according to a post on the hospital's Facebook page. A very thankful post, as you might imagine. It says in part, "There are no words to express our gratitude." By the way, Luckey, Ohio is 481 miles from Cedar Rapids.

The Linn County Emergency Management Agency (L.C.E.M.A) received a couple more big donations, from local businesses. Both Toyota Financial and Cedar Graphics donated face shields to the cause. You'll also see members of the Civil Air Patrol 129th Cedar Rapids Composite doing inventory of surgical gowns and other materials in one of the pictures below. You can see all the photos at the bottom of this story and the Facebook posts on the L.C.E.M.A. page here, here, and here.

UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's Hospital also posted their thankfulness for high-protein energy packs, provided by the MedQuarter, for their teams in both the Intensive Care Units and Respiratory Therapy.

Thank you to every single person involved in every facet of these donations, and the people that will put those donations to life-saving use.